TDWH: Poison control; getting Wendish at Folklife

Glenn Close (from left), Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler and Lisa Masters starred in “The Stepford Wives,” which came out this weekend in 2004.

Happenings from Weekenders of five, 10 and 15 years ago. Note: To clear up some confusion that has cropped up recently, TDWH stands for “This Date in Weekender History,” not “Texting Definitely Wrecks Homes.”

June 11, 2004

MOVIES

Maybe it’s the delayed effects of last year’s writers’ strike that’s thinning out the summer of 2009 movie crop. Regardless, it was a shock to open this particular Weekender from five years ago and find EIGHT — count ’em, eight — movie reviews. Seven new flicks, plus a look at the new IMAX version of “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azbakan.”

• “The Stepford Wives“: Remake of the 1975 flick starred Nicole Kidman in the Katharine Ross role of the outsider who finds the wives of Stepford, Conn., a little too perfect. Like robots or something. Co-starred Glenn Close, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken and Matthew Broderick.

• “Garfield: The Movie”: Disastrous attempt to make a live-action movie out of the comic strip, even with Bill Murray as the voice of the fat cat.

ALSO OPENING: The religious-zealot spoof “Saved!,” the offbeat romance “A Slipping-Down Life” (starring Guy Pearce and Lili Taylor, filmed in Austin in 1998 and rescued from distribution hell), the angst-ridden “Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself” and “Gloomy Sunday,” a German import abut a love triangle interrupted by the Nazis in 1940.

(File Photo)

Breckin Meyer and Jennifer Love Hewitt seem to have forgotten an important family in “Garfield the Movie.”

MUSIC, EVENTS

• Texas Folklife Festival: Staff writer and then Weekender Calendar Editor Jessica Belasco interviewed a guy who thought he was German until he discovered he was, in fact, a Wend, a Slavic people who immigrated to Texas from eastern Germany in the mid-19th century. The Wendish booth, which he worked in, served delicacies such as a cheese-curd-and-baking-soda sandwich. Yum.

• Kerrville Folk Festival: For the fest’s final weekend, music writer Jim Beal Jr. interviewed Mary Gauthier (pronounced Go-SHAY), who had some interesting things to say about festival gigs. “I’ve played festivals all over the world and they’re all different,” she said. “At Kerrville I assume people will listen to the words. I do some festivals where you really need a band. I went to Telluride and got my ass kicked. Kicked! That’s the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. It’s a picker’s paradise. If I go back I’ll bring a big-ass band. I’ll bring Lyle Lovett and his Large Band.”

• Chicago/Earth, Wind & Fire: The first incarnation of what became an annual event for a time at the Verizon was assigned to, uh, me. Guess everyone else was busy. So I found what I thought was a good hook:

Some stupid questions aren’t as stupid as they sound, such as “Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?” or “Name the band from Chicago — Chicago, or Earth, Wind & Fire?” The answers: No one (President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife, Julia, are entombed there, not buried); and both of them.

• Lee Rocker: The former Stray Cats bassist brought his new rockabilly band into Casbeers. He talked about the genre with Jim Beal Jr. “I think it scared everyone in a way,” he said. “Rockabilly is the original rock ‘n’ roll. But it’s also the original punk rock. It wasn’t tame.”

(File Photo)

Heather Graham and Mike Myers show how England swings in “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

June 11, 1999

MOVIES

• “Star Wars” mania! Here’s a memory jogger — it took me more than two weeks to break down and go see “Phantom Menace.” Blame it on Weekender Syndrome, which invoves getting so tired of dealing with a much-anticipated event, you can’t stand the thought of participating when it actually gets here. So I took the opportunity to answer some of the issues critics had brought up. Rather than excerpt them, I’ll just make them a separate post.

Now, on to the real movies:

• “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”: Mike Myers’ second adventure as the swinging British spy with lousy teeth reverses the formula of the original, in that he has to journey to the past to recover his mojo, which ws stolen by Dr. Evil. Heather Graham is his hot ’60s sidekick, and Myers trotted out a new character, Scottish assassin Fat Bastard, who provides some stellar gross-out moments.

ALSO OPENING: “The School of Flesh,” a French May-December romance in which the woman (Isabelle Huppert) is the December; “The Winslow Boy,” an adaptation of a David Mamet play about a London prep-school boy expelled for theft in 1910; “The King of Masks,” a Chinese period drama about a street performer and his 8-year-old protégé.

MUSIC, EVENTS

• Damon Wayans at Majestic: The star of “In Living Colour” and “Major Payne” drew his standup material from his new book, “Bootleg.” The show did not draw from his “In Living Colour” sketches such as Homie the Clown or “Men on Film,” he told staff writer Hector Saldaña. “Hopefully this act is so good, that they forget for an hour,” he said. “I’ve done those other characters, and while I still have great affections for them, it’s time to move on. I don’t want to be the guy that does 45 minutes of Homey the Clown.”

• Rodney Carrington: It was a banner week for A-list comedians, with the country humorist playing Midnight Rodeo. His video for his song “Dancing With a Man” had been in the news because Country Music Television wouldn’t show it. “They won’t play the record because it has a parental advisory sticker on it,” he told Hector Saldaña. “Hell, the record isn’t X-rated; it’s R-rated. In Nashville, they act like country people don’t go to (strip bars) or have (bleep) kids or go out drinking.”

• Poison: Headlining a hair-metal extravaganza at Sunken Garden that also features Ratt, Great White and L.A. Guns, the band featured its original lineup, including a recently detoxed C.C. DeVille, for the first time since 1992. Despite being out of style after going through the grunge/alt-rock/rap-rock ’90s, singer Bret Michaels told ace free-lancer David Glessner that Poison hadn’t lost its fans. “Even death-metal thrash guys have come up to us and said, ‘Me and my girlfriend love ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn,’ ” he said. “I think the reason those guys respect us is because if you strip Poison down to the bare essentials, we’re as close to an independent, punk-rock band as you can get. We just happened to be successful.”

• Robert Cray Band: The blues/R&B singer and guitarist was as savvy with an interview as he is onstage. With the Spurs embroiled in the Western Conference Finals against Portland en route to their first title, Cray, who started making his blues, etc. mark out of the Pacific Northwest, told Jim Beal Jr., “I used to be a Portland fan, but I’m rooting for the Spurs.” And he said it without hesitation, Beal reported.

June 10, 1994

MOVIES

• “City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly’s Gold”: We put THIS on the cover? Sure enough, there’s a cartoon caricature of Jon Lovitz (not Billy Crystal or Jack Palance, curiously; I think the artist at the time preferred Lovitz), who starred in the forgettable sequel about city guys on a trail ride. It somehow managed to bring Jack Palance back to life as Curly’s twin brother, Duke.

• “Speed”: Here’s this week’s real hit. This one-crisis-after another (elevator, bus, subway) was the surprise hit of the summer of 1994. Keanu Reeves and Dennis Hopper tried to outwit each other as a cop and a mad bomber, with Sandra Bullock, in her breakout role, caught in the middle. “Speed” has one thing in common with “City Slickers” (the original) — a terrible sequel. Remember “Speed 2: Cruise Control,” which transferred the franchise to a cruise ship?

• “Little Buddha”: Bernardo Bertolucci film about a Seattle kid who may be the reincarnation of an ancient Tibetan monk was really slow.

EVENTS, MUSIC

• “Dinosaurs: A Jurassic Adventure” at Witte: Animatronic dinosaurs were all the rage in the wake of “Jurassic Park, and these Japanese-made beasties took up a summer residency at the Witte. “This is a real dinosaur show, incorporating many of the most recent discoveries about dinosaurs,” a staffer said. The exhibit featured a girsly scene involving a pack of the small-but-deadly deionychus (who look like raptors) feeding on a dead dinosaur.

• “Cats”: Even 15 years ago, staff writer Dan R. Goddard was asking, hasn’t everyone seen this already? “I think the show is so huge, that you really can’t see it in one viewing,” said Mary Gutzi, who plays Grizabella. “We’re starting to get people who saw the show as teen-agers, and now they’re bringing their kids.”

• Santana at Sunken Garden: Years before the “Supernatural” CD made Carlos Santana a superstar again, he arrived with relatively little fanfare.

• Melanie at Kerrville Folk Festival: The rare folk singer who had some hits, she made her Kerrville debut. “I always thought of myself as a little more mainstream than a lot of the other artists who do the folk circuit,” she told free-lancer Ron Young. “I’m a folk artists who has had pop records.”